Kosovo Warfare Imperils Macedonia’s Fragile Peace

Kiro Gligorov is due to retire next year with a claim to Balkan fame: He’s the only statesman who led his people to independence from the Yugoslav federation without a shot fired.

But with combat raging in what’s left of Yugoslavia, Macedonia’s 81-year-old president admits to worrying about whether that legacy will outlive him.

“The situation at the moment does not permit me to be calm and assured,” Gligorov said here at his breezy lakeside presidential villa--an escape from the heat of Skopje, the capital, but not from the hourly updates he gets on the fighting in Kosovo province next door.

Outlining a worst-case scenario, he said he fears that warfare between Yugoslav military forces and Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian separatists could spill across the border, swamping Macedonia and its 2 million people with up to 100,000 Albanian refugees.

“In light of our economic capacities, this would be excruciating for us,” Gligorov said. Tensions between his country’s ruling Slavic majority and restive Albanian minority could turn violent, he added. “This is something I am constantly preoccupied with.”

According to recent bulletins on the president’s desk, the 5-month-old conflict in Kosovo is starting to tear at this landlocked mountain country’s borders and its fragile sense of security.

Macedonia borders Kosovo--a province of Serbia, the dominant of Yugoslavia’s two remaining republics--as well as Albania, Greece and Bulgaria. The ethnic Albanians fighting for independence make up 90% of Kosovo’s population. They have relatives in Albania, where the guerrillas have sanctuaries, and in the heavily Albanian settlements of northwest Macedonia.

In late July, about 80 smugglers hauling weapons from Albania on a mule train exchanged gunfire with Macedonian border guards for more than two hours before turning back. It was the boldest apparent attempt yet--one of several reported each week--to move guns across Macedonia to the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army, whose more direct supply routes over the Albania-Kosovo border are under Yugoslav attack.

The Yugoslav army has reacted by mining Kosovo’s border with Macedonia in several places, a Macedonian defense official said. Norwegian troops of the U.N. Preventive Deployment Force, in Macedonia to discourage such acts, found seven land mines in two places along the border this month.

Nine bombs have exploded harmlessly in Macedonia since December, most of them at police stations and at an army barracks. Gligorov, who survived an unsolved bombing attack in 1995 but lost his right eye, said he suspects that the recent explosions “have the aim of sending us a message that similar developments in Macedonia as those in Kosovo are possible.”

At Gligorov’s request, the U.N. Security Council has extended by six months--until Feb. 28--the U.N. force’s mission to monitor Macedonia’s borders. It is also adding 300 troops to the force, now made up of 750 troops from the United States and four Scandinavian countries.

The Macedonian leader helped win peaceful independence in 1991 by renouncing claims to all property of Yugoslavia’s 3rd Army and negotiating its removal from his new nation. Having avoided the ethnic wars that bloodied the independence of former Yugoslav republics Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and to a much lesser extent Slovenia, Gligorov is trying to keep the peace with a 15,000-strong Macedonian defense force built from scratch on U.S. aid and close ties with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

But it is Macedonia’s internal friction that makes violence across the border so threatening. Critics fault Gligorov for failing to achieve tolerant coexistence between Slavic Macedonians, who make up about two-thirds of the population, and Albanians, who make up at least 23% and say they feel like second-class citizens.

“We didn’t suffer the Balkan wars, but we didn’t learn anything from them either. Our leaders behave in the same ways,” said Iso Rusi, a columnist for the weekly magazine Focus. “We have been lucky so far, but there’s a feeling here that we’re living in a temporary country.”

Born to a Macedonian mother and an Albanian father, Rusi, 47, is sensitive to Macedonia’s divide, which ethnic nationalism has widened over the past two decades. “We live in closed circles of Macedonians and Albanians with large spaces in between,” he said. “It’s not so comfortable to be just a citizen.”

Political parties, women’s groups and even human rights agencies form along ethnic lines. Children study in ethnically segregated classrooms, usually in different shifts. Of 14,000 marriages registered in Macedonia in 1996, only 22 joined Albanians and Macedonians.

In Skopje, most Macedonians live south of the Vardar River and shop in Western-style malls. Most Albanians live north of the river and go to the Bit Bazaar, a Middle Eastern-style warren of outdoor stalls.

The city does boast a mixed philharmonic orchestra. But few multiethnic institutions achieve much harmony.

Macedonia’s army, for example, is plagued by fistfights between Albanian and Macedonian conscripts, veterans from both sides say. They even wear different uniforms--drab Yugoslav leftovers for Albanians, new camouflage for Macedonians.

Some question whether the army, which is 25% Albanian, could hold together under real pressure. Nadi Terzia, 21, who served last year, said he and other Albanian conscripts repeatedly refused orders by Macedonian officers to open fire on Albanians trying to sneak across the border.

The government’s ability to cope with ethnic conflict got its biggest test last summer. Ethnic Macedonian police officers pulled down an Albanian flag from the City Hall in Gostivar, a mostly Albanian town, and crushed a local demonstration, killing three Albanians and injuring 186.

A parliamentary panel that included Albanian lawmakers found that the police were justified in taking action but used excessive force. The government quietly dismissed two Interior Ministry officials and six police officers but ignored the panel’s recommendation to prosecute them--leaving Albanians with a sense of unfinished justice.

Macedonia is calm this year, and its long-depressed economy is finally growing, but news from Kosovo has sharpened the ethnic divide.

Ethnic Macedonians sitting in outdoor cafes read Serbian accounts of the war and gloat over Yugoslav victories. Albanians in other cafes read Albanian-language propaganda for the Kosovo separatist cause. According to one survey, more than half the ethnic Albanians in Macedonia would support a family member joining Kosovo’s guerrilla army.

The two groups also differ over whether Macedonia, which is sheltering about 2,000 Kosovo refugees, should accept larger numbers.

“What I’m worried about is a long-range polarization where the Albanian community here comes more in line with the radicalized Kosovo Albanian community and where the ethnic Macedonian community lines up more behind the tough Serb response,” said a Western diplomat in Skopje.

So far, however, Macedonia is less polarized than Kosovo, where Albanians boycott all government institutions and elections to protest Serbian police repression.

Gligorov brought Albanians into his first Cabinet, and they now hold five of the 20 posts. In return for the promise of minority rights and a fair share of government jobs, moderate Albanian leaders here set aside their demand for autonomy.

Seven years later, they are disappointed. A private university formed by the Albanian community in 1994 has yet to gain government recognition, leaving the 300 men and women of its first graduating class without credentials for public service. Albanians account for no more than 3% of all police and no more than 5% of all government workers.

Western officials in Macedonia expect no progress on inter-ethnic issues before parliamentary elections in October. They say the election campaign has hardened positions on both sides.

But they note that the most radical Albanian political party, which is not represented in the Cabinet, is running in the election and denying any separatist aims.

“We accept the existence of the Macedonian state, but we want to share in it and not live in a ghetto,” said the party’s leader, Arben Xhaferi. He warned, however, that Albanians’ loyalty to the state would crumble if all-out fighting spilled from Kosovo into Macedonia.

“In that case, we don’t give a damn about Macedonia,” he said. “If our brothers in Kosovo are being eliminated, we would join the war. Macedonia wouldn’t stand a chance.”